12/4/2009

Breitbart co-founder Scott Baker and GatewayPundit have taken a closer look at a reading list endorsed by President Obama’s “Safe Schools” Czar Kevin Jennings:

“Safe Schools Czar Kevin Jennings was the founder, and for many years, Executive Director of an organization called the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN). GLSEN started essentially as Jennings’ personal project and grew to become the culmination of his life’s work. And he was chosen by President Obama to be the nation’s Safe Schools Czar primarily because he had founded and led GLSEN (scroll for bio).

GLSEN’s stated mission is to empower gay youth in the schools and to stop harassment by other students. It encourages the formation of Gay Student Alliances and condemns the use of hateful words. GLSEN also strives to influence the educational curriculum to include materials which the group believes will increase tolerance of gay students and decrease bullying. To that end, GLSEN maintains a recommended reading list of books that it claims “furthers our mission to ensure safe schools for all students.” In other words, these are the books that GLSEN’s directors think all kids should be reading: gay kids should read them to raise their self-esteem, and straight kids should read them in order to become more aware and tolerant and stop bullying gay kids.”

What did they find in 11 of the books GLSEN recommended for 7th-12th graders?

“What we discovered shocked us. We were flabbergasted. Rendered speechless.

We were unprepared for what we encountered. Book after book after book contained stories and anecdotes that weren’t merely X-rated and pornographic, but which featured explicit descriptions of sex acts between pre-schoolers; stories that seemed to promote and recommend child-adult sexual relationships; stories of public masturbation, anal sex in restrooms, affairs between students and teachers, five-year-olds playing sex games, semen flying through the air. One memoir even praised becoming a prostitute as a way to increase one’s self-esteem. Above all, the books seemed to have less to do with promoting tolerance than with an unabashed attempt to indoctrinate students into a hyper-sexualized worldview.”

Excerpts from the 11 GLSEN-recommended books are at the first link (here) and continued here.

In addition, GatewayPundit notes that, after posting the “Safe Schools” Czar reading list post, his website suffered two cyberattacks that temporarily shut down the server.

“After more than two months in a Swiss jail, a Reuters journalist saw Polanski in one of two cars which swept past some 200 reporters and into the garage of the film director’s luxury home in the upmarket ski resort of Gstaad.

“Roman Polanski was today released from custody pending extradition and transferred to Gstaad, where he is under house arrest at his chalet,” the Swiss government said in a statement.”

President Obama originally planned to travel to Copenhagen on December 9 for the opening day of the climate change summit and continue to Oslo on December 10 to receive his Nobel Peace Prize. Now he’s changed his plans and will make separate trips so he can attend the final day of the Copenhagen summit on December 18:

“President Barack Obama will push back his visit to the international climate change treaty negotiations in Copenhagen from the first week of the conference to its final scheduled day, a senior White House official said this afternoon.

The move comes in response to greenhouse gas emissions reduction pledges made in recent days by China and India. It will put Obama at the conference at the same time as dozens of other heads of state, and it immediately raises expectations anew for some type of climate agreement to result from the talks.

By switching his visit from Dec. 9 to Dec. 18, Obama appears to be betting that his presence can – as he has expressed hope for several times in the past – push the negotiations “over the top” toward an agreement.”

However, France’s Sarkozy questioned Obama’s travel plans from the time they were first announced, saying that “[o]nly the heads of state and government can take the major decisions which have to be made” and the “decisive moment is December 17 and 18.” Score one for Sarkozy.

What are those decisions, you ask? Here’s a hint: It involves the President promising to spend more of American taxpayers’ money:

“This week, the President discussed the status of the negotiations with Prime Minister Rudd, Chancellor Merkel, President Sarkozy, and Prime Minister Brown and concluded that there appears to be an emerging consensus that a core element of the Copenhagen accord should be to mobilize $10 billion a year by 2012 to support adaptation and mitigation in developing countries, particularly the most vulnerable and least developed countries that could be destabilized by the impacts of climate change. The United States will pay its fair share of that amount and other countries will make substantial commitments as well.”

I hope Americans aren’t planning a big Christmas this year. We need to save for climate change.

“During President Obama’s speech in Allentown, PA today he scratched his head with his extended middle finger as he named the mayor of Bethlehem, PA. John Callahan supported Hillary Clinton during the Democratic primary.”

Today’s unemployment figures from the Labor Department show workers are losing jobs at a slower rate:

“Federal figures released Friday showed that the rate fell from 10.2 percent in October to 10 percent as employers shed the fewest number of jobs since the recession began two years ago. The government also said far fewer jobs were lost in September and October than first reported.

And the so-called underemployment rate, counting part-time workers who want full-time jobs and laid-off workers who have given up their job hunt, also fell, from 17.5 percent in October to 17.2 percent.”

November saw job losses of 11,000 compared to 111,000 lost jobs in October 2009. November’s job losses were the lowest since December 2007.

“The Black unemployment rate is officially 15.7 percent nationwide compared to 9.5 percent for whites. *** Joblessness for 16-to-24-year old Black men has reached Great Depression proportions — 34.5 percent in October, more than three times the rate for the general U.S. population according to the Center for Labor Market Studies.”

Members of the Congressional Black Caucus are not happy and want President Obama to know it:

“In what is being portrayed as a direct rebuke of the White House’s lack of response to the deepening unemployment meltdown, Rep. Maxine Waters D-California, chair of the powerful Financial Services sub committee killed a scheduled November 19 vote on President Barack Obama’s financial regulation reform bill.
***
Waters led a bloc of African American House Democrats angry and frustrated that the Obama administration is mired in heated partisan battles over healthcare reform, war troop levels and fixing Wall Street and is not doing enough to address the plight of Blacks and Browns on Main Street. The groups have been hit much harder than any other by unemployment.”

UPDATE 2: The Instapundit has a jobs chart showing what the Obama Administration promised vs what it delivered.

Hot Air has the evidence. In her first statement she said the public is “rightfully” making it an issue and that it is “fair game”:

Would you make the birth certificate an issue if you ran?

I think the public, rightfully, is still making it an issue. I don’t have a problem with that. I don’t know if I would have to bother to make it an issue ’cause I think there are enough members of the electorate who still want answers.

Do you think it’s a fair question to be looking at?

I think it’s a fair question, just like I think past associations and past voting record — all of that is fair game. You know, I’ve got to tell you, too: I think our campaign, the McCain/Palin campaign didn’t do a good enough job in that area. We didn’t call out Obama and some of his associates on their records and what their beliefs were and perhaps what their future plans were. And I don’t think that that was fair to voters to not have done our jobs as candidates and as a campaign to bring to light a lot of the things that now we’re seeing made manifest in the administration.

I mean, truly, if your past is fair game and your kids are fair game, certainly Obama’s past should be. I mean, we want to treat men and women equally, right?

Hey, you know, that’s a great point, in that weird conspiracy-theory freaky thing that people talk about that Trig isn’t my real son. And a lot of people say, “Well you need to produce his birth certificate! You need to prove that he’s your kid!” Which we have done. But yeah, so maybe we could reverse that and use the same [unintelligible]-type thinking on them.

Voters have every right to ask candidates for information if they so choose. I’ve pointed out that it was seemingly fair game during the 2008 election for many on the left to badger my doctor and lawyer for proof that Trig is in fact my child. Conspiracy-minded reporters and voters had a right to ask… which they have repeatedly. But at no point – not during the campaign, and not during recent interviews – have I asked the president to produce his birth certificate or suggested that he was not born in the United States.

She doesn’t take back her statements that the public is “rightfully” making it an issue, or that the birth certificate issue is “fair game.”

And don’t try to tell me that she is only saying “it’s fair game for Obama if Trig’s birth certificate is fair game for me.” She takes that lifeline when it’s offered, sure. But she was calling it “fair game,” and an issue “rightfully” raised, before the lifeline was even thrown.

Does this bother anyone?

P.S. And is it any different from SEK’s statement, in which he said something rather indefensible and later “clarified” it without retracting it? If Words Mean Things, does that apply to Sarah Palin as well?

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